Many different unfolding pop-up structures have been proposed and used for decades in greeting cards, books and advertising novelties. These pop-up displays have employed multi-sheet pictorial structures of different degrees of complexity, and they are normally erected by an articulating panel connected by a fold line to one of the hinged pop-up panels and serving to draw the structure from its collapsed condition to its erect, pop-up condition either automatically, as in my U.S. Pat. No. 4,592,573, or by manual actuation, as in my U.S. Pat. No. 4,441,270.
Compressed steel springs have been employed for generations to produce a pop-up deployment of a display structure, as in the conventional Jack-in-the-Box, when the compression force is released by the user. Resilient wire springs and wire coil springs have been proposed for use in pop-up greeting cards where the compressed spring is released as the card is unfolded.
The use of a bent plastic leaf spring having a predetermined angular bend determining its relaxed deployed shape, which may be resiliently bent by a compressive force applied to the plastic leaf spring as it is depressed between two panels of a folded stationery sheet or between the two faces of an envelope, is believed to be unique in the pop-up advertising display and greeting card stationery field. Sheet plastic material used in most stationery and display products is normally manufactured for use only in a single display mode, and is not normally provided with a two-mode configuration capable of resilient collapsed mode storage and released pop-up mode deployment.
Accordingly, a principal object of the present invention is to provide folded greeting cards, novelty stationery and advertising pop-up novelties incorporating a deployable panel resiliently supported above the face of an underlying panel by a collapsible and erectable pop-up support structure, automatically deployed to its pop-up condition when collapsing force is removed.
Another object of the present invention is to provide such collapsible, pop-up display structures incorporating a bent resilient leaf spring formed of plastic material with a permanent angular bend formed therein, providing resilient collapsibility as the angular bend is resiliently depressed to minimize the acute bend angle, and automatically deployed to its pop-up condition as the depressing force is removed.
A further object of the invention is to provide folded stationery, greeting cards and advertising novelties incorporating a bent resilient plastic leaf spring, forming one corner fold line of a collapsible quadrilateral support structure positioned between the underlying panel and the overlying deployable display panel.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a bent resilient plastic leaf spring having a Z-shaped cross-section configuration incorporating two opposite preformed acute angle bends, wherein the upper and lower arms of the Z-shaped cross section are adhesively adhered to the underlying panel and the overlying display panel respectively, providing a bouncing, bobbing deployed display of the overlying display panel.
Other objects of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part appear hereinafter.
The invention accordingly comprises the features of construction, combinations of elements, and arrangements of parts which will be exemplified in the constructions hereinafter set forth, and the scope of the invention will be indicated in the claims.